The Role of Ethics in Commercial Genetic Research: Notes on the Notion of Commodification

Author: Hoeyer, Klaus

Source: Medical Anthropology, Volume 24, Number 1, January-March 2005 , pp. 45-70(26)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

The emergence of exchange systems for new bodily entities such as organs, cell lines, and tissue samples has generated increasing ethical concern. Concurrently, the role of ethics is becoming contested. Some social scientists have sought to reveal ethics policies as veils for commercial exploitation, masking the crude commodification of the human body. Other social scientists and ethicists have attempted to carve out a role for ethics as a defense against such, presumably violent, market forces. This article seeks an alternative route. In analyzing the commercialization of a particular Swedish biobank, it suggests that we are in fact witnessing a process of decommodification and that ethics policies do indeed play a central role in this. However, concomitantly, ethics can be seen to veil the commodification not of bodily entities but, rather, of research results. When approaching these processes it is suggested that we analyze the interrelatedness of moral reasoning and forms of exchange.

Keywords: ethics; morality; exchange systems; commodification; biobank

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01459740590905642

Affiliations: 1: Department of Health Services Research, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3A, DK-2200, Copenhagen N, Denmark, (+45) 35 32 76 29

Publication date: 2005-01-01